"I do not want to diminish the red-ball competition - it's the gold standard"

HUW TURBERVILL AT THE KIA OVAL: The new ECB chair Richard Thompson has softened his stance on The Hundred but is committed to ensuring all four domestic formats are properly showcased during the English summer

County fans who despise The Hundred and see new ECB chair Richard Thomspon as their saviour will be disappointed that he seems to have changed his mind.

Certainly, he has not immediately swung the axe on it, and is talking about trying to accommodate all four domestic competitions - calling that "the most difficult game of Jenga ever". 

He denies he has had a full-on conversion, however, and acknowledges the effect it has on the LV= Insurance County Championship, T20 Blast and Royal London Cup.

Speaking at the Kia Oval, where he has just departed as club chair, he said: "I didn't suddenly go into this special booth and come out the other side saying 'I like The Hundred'. It hasn't given me special juice. But the reality is I've now seen different perspectives.

"I'm a convert to the audience that it's clearly reached. And I think from a broadcast perspective, as much as it didn't quite hit the big numbers, it hit some great numbers. It hits audiences in terms of profile that other sports, let alone cricket, isn't reaching.

^{Previously an opponent of The Hundred, Thompson is now a supporter of the new competition (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)}

"So you see the reaction from the BBC and Sky and they're all over it. I mean, they can see the value of it. But what I don't want to do is have a Hundred that diminishes the Blast. The Hundred can work and will work. The Hundred was pre-sold in that pocket that goes through between the Premier League seasons. And we've got to make it work.

"But I would always stand by the decisions I took back in 2018 [as Surrey chair]. And the challenge there was I was never really against the competition. I was just against the fact that it was going to cannibalise the schedule, which is what it has done.

"And now we need to find a way of balancing the schedule where four competitions can coexist together without one cannibalising the other and we know that's challenging and we know that's difficult. But we all know the schedule we've got at the moment doesn't work.

"So we're going to have to look at that hard and obviously the high-performance review [led by Andrew Strauss] had already been engaged before I came on board.

"I do not want to diminish the red-ball competition. For me, it's the gold standard. It's where you make history, where you define your career"

"But if anything, it's quite helpful to kind of take a step back and make one commitment that there are no more domestic reviews. There are no governance reviews. As a game, we do too much of that. So I think now's your chance. This can be the mother of all reviews and if we get it right - and some of the outcomes might be radical… It's like the worst game of Jenga ever."

Mike Atherton in The Times suggested that it might eventually become T20. Thompson said, "no thought had been given to that."

In regard to private money coming into The Hundred - there's been talk of investors being allowed to buy a stake in teams - perhaps up to 49 per cent. He said: "It's a good question but I don't want to get too drawn on that because there's a lot playing out at the moment on that one.

"We all know at the moment there is a gold rush for TV rights - what are now? Fourteen T20 franchises in the world. There's so much interest in The Hundred for lots of reasons. Let's just pull it back, we're only in year two."

Even if Thompson is committing to making the schedule work including The Hundred, first-class county fans will at least take solace from his commitment to protecting the Championship.

^{The premier 50-over competition could be expanded (Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images)}

"Our domestic season is actually quite short compared to other countries," he added. "I do not want to diminish the red-ball competition. For me, it's the gold standard. It's where you make history, where you define your career.

"But you need to ensure that what red-ball cricket you're playing - and I think we kind of get fixated on volume and not schedule - there has to be a schedule and a rhythm to the season that I have not experienced in 12 years."

A match every fortnight might be possible, he said, which would placate the concerns over fast bowlers breaking down or being overly rotated. That could, he said, see the rounds reduced from 14 to 12.

He also still likes the idea of a knockout cup in 50-over cricket including the 21 National Counties.

Thompson talks about The Hundred not diminishing the Championship and the Blast. Clearly, it has been doing that to both for each of the last two years, so good luck to him. He needs the Midas touch.

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